The Desert Spear

myself.”
    “The only unfinished business you have is under your skirts,” Elona muttered. Rojer choked and wine spilled from his nose. Elona smiled smugly as she sipped from her cup.
    “At least I can keep mine around my ankles!” Leesha snapped.
    “Don’t you take that tone with me,” Elona said. “I may not know anything about politics or demonology, but I know you’re a winter away from becoming a spinster crone, and no matter how many corelings you leave dead behind you, you’ll still go to your grave regretting not having
added
life to the world.”
    “I’m the town Herb Gatherer,” Leesha said. “Saving those who would have otherwise died doesn’t count as adding life to the world?”
    “Vika saves lives,” Elona said, referring to one of Leesha’s fellow Gatherers. “Din’t stop her raising a brood for Tender Jona. Midwife Darsy’d do the same in an instant, if she could find a man able to close his eyes and stiffen long enough to put a child in her homely womb.”
    “Darsy’s done more for this town than you ever will, Mother,” Leesha said. She and Darsy, both former apprentices of Hag Bruna, had been at odds once, but no longer. Darsy was now Leesha’s most devoted student, if not her best.
    “Nonsense,” Elona said. “I did my duty, and gave the town
you.
You may be ungrateful for it, but I think the Hollow benefits well enough for my troubles.”
    Leesha scowled.
    “Any fool watching you and the Painted Man together can tell there’s been something between you,” Elona pressed, “and that it’s not to either of your satisfaction. Did he fail abed?” she asked. “Darsy gives me herbs for your father when he—”
    “That’s ridiculous!” Rojer cried as Erny flushed red. “Leesha would never—”
    Elona cut him off with a snort. “Well she sure ent going with you. It’s plain as day you got the eye for her, but you ent good enough, fiddle boy, and you know it.” Rojer’s face turned beet red. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
    “You’ve got no right to talk to him like that, Mother,” Leesha said. “You don’t know—”
    “Always what I don’t know!” Elona barked. “Like your poor mum is too dim to see the sun shining in her face!” She gulped her wine, and her face took on a cruel cast Leesha knew well, and feared.
    “Like I know the boy’s song about how the Painted Man found you after you was left for dead by bandits on the road,” Elona said. “And I know how men treat women like us, when there ent no one to stop them.”
    “Mother,” Leesha warned, her voice hardening.
    “Not how I’d wanted you to lose your flower,” Elona said, “but it was time it was done somehow, and I expect you’re the better for it.”
    Leesha slapped her hand down on the table, glaring. “Get your cloak, Rojer,” she said. “It’s getting dark, and we’re safer out among the demons.” She shoved the blank books into her satchel and set it over her shoulder as she snatched her richly embroidered cloak from the peg by the door and threw it about her shoulders, clasping it at her throat with a silver ward pin.
    Erny came over, hands spread in apology. Leesha embraced him as Rojer put on his cloak. Elona stayed at the table with the wine.
    “I really wish you wouldn’t walk around after dark, magic cloak or no,” Erny said. “We can’t exactly replace you.”
    “Rojer has his fiddle,” Leesha said, “and I have more tricks than wards of unsight, if a coreling were to somehow find us. We ’re quite safe.”
    “You can witch all the Core to your bidding, but not a simple man,” Elona sneered into her glass.
    Leesha ignored her, putting up her hood and stepping out into the dusk.
    “Now do you believe me?” she asked Rojer as the door closed behind them.
    “Seems I owe you a sun,” Rojer admitted.

    The snow crunched under Leesha’s booted feet as she and Rojer headed to the village proper. Their breath fogged in the crisp winter air, but their cloaks were lined with fur and kept them warm enough.
    Rojer hadn’t said a word since Elona’s comment. His head was down, face buried under long locks of red hair. His fiddle was tucked in its case, slung beneath his motley cloak, but she could tell from the way his fingers flexed that he longed to hold it. He always played the fiddle when he was upset.
    Leesha knew Rojer shined on her. Most everyone knew, really. Half the women in town thought she was mad for not snatching him up. And why